Yes please.
How much longer until preliminary results are available? An hour? Am I doing the time zone conversion correctly.
Why is the symbol for UK elections a sort of giant ribbon thing like what we give the prize pigs and quilts at the state fair?
2: something about David Cameron and pigs.
wasn't that a black mirror episode?
From the Guardian:
Exit poll results in full
Conservatives: 368
Labour: 191
SNP: 55
Liberal Democrats: 13
Plaid Cymru: 3
Greens: 1
Brexit party: 0
Others: 22
Live updates here: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2019/dec/12/general-election-2019-uk-live-labour-tories-corbyn-boris-johnson-results-exit-poll
If the exit poll is correct . . . [Boris Johnson] will have done better in terms of numbers of seats than [every Conservative leader over the last 40 years except Thatcher in 1983/87].
...
[I]f the exit poll is correct, ... it would be the worst result for Labour since 1935, when the party got just 154 under Clement Attlee, who has only just taken over as party leader.
Really nice welcoming, guys, much appreciated.
They should change parliament to have 435 seats so I only have to keep track of one set of numbers.
Well, at least whatever horrible fate befalls the UK, we now know that a solid majority there will deserve it.
Won't the head of the losing party have to resign?
There ought to be a word for when totally depressing news is nonetheless cheerfully received because it's practically useful.
I haven't wanted to face it, but now it's officially time for me to start looking for a new country to live in.
They have lots of biodiversity.
Costa Rica has some of the best science funding in Central America.
I'm at a party for a big private university's Ireland House right now. Everyone is determinedly not talking about this.
Do they have to make Corbyn a baron or something to get rid of him? Or like the Viscount of Palestine?
I wonder if Johnson's thoughts will turn back to a hard border now that NI is irrelevant to Westminster again.
How come Tony Blair didn't get ennobled? I mean, he had a lot of problems, but that seems to be a requirement, not an impediment.
A border reiver would steal too many cows.
Looks like rather a lot of BBC America viewers overestimated the market for bearded, bicycling, gardening jam-cookers.
I was going to say "No" in the first comment but someone got to it first. Now look.
Not to make this all about us, but in the sense that Brexit foreshadowed Trump, this has me terrified that this foreshadows Trump's re-election. Ok I did make this all about us, sorry.
Maybe they could just build a pretend border out of blockchain and the rubes would buy into it.
I don't know British politics. Why is Corbyn so unpopular? And why is he the leader of the party, given that?
I have a shitty internet connection but will try later to explain. He's useless. He's useless in a way that less privileged people suss out at once: he hasn't felt he had to change his mind about anything in forty years. Her never had that feeling when reality snacks you in the face. Even this result will obviously be the fault of other people as his followers are already saying.
He's self-righteous.
Obviously no onew expects you to follow the blog closely, but there was a guest post a while back which started
The great dirty secret of British politics at the moment is not about Brexit, or only indirectly. It is that very few people believe that Jeremy Corbyn can win an election against Boris Johnson. Corbyn himself is presumably one of them, as are the members of the tight-knit clique around him and the true believers in the comment sections. But the bulk of the parliamentary Labour party doesn't believe it, the polls don't suggest it will happen, and the Conservative party would never have chosen an unprincipled, incompetent bastard like Johnson for its leader if it did not believe he could beat Corbyn like a gong.
This has very little to do with the policies they'll run on. No one believes that Johnson will try to keep his promises, nor that Corbyn be able to keep his. The sums don't really add up in either case, although Corbyn's regime would be less disastrous that Johnson's.
Corbyn had a speech to give this morning. He, and the whole country, is facing something that is turning into a constitutional crisis as well as a political, social, and economic catastrophe - and he read it out like like a station announcement for the semi-fast train to Clacton and the apocalypse. For all the denunciations of him as a Leninist monster, if you led him to a barricade he'd only plant carrots there.
Corbyn is pretty much exactly the kind of unpatriotic socialist whom Orwell mocked. The Brexit movement was in large part an uprush of English nationalism, but he managed to be both pro-Brexit and anti-English with his enthusiasm for any terrorists who could be painted as anti-imperialist (ie, anti-USA).
He and his people loathed with an abiding passion Tony Blair, the only politician in fifty years to have delivered an actual Labour government which did things for poor people. He voted against said Labour governments more than 400 times -- more times than even David Cameron -- because they weren't radical enough. And now he has delivered us all into the hands of the Johnson/Farage party.
Italic fail. The whole thing down to the "carrots" like was from an earlier piece.
How cohesive is the new crop of Tory MPs?
The answer is that I don't know and possibly no one does. "Nasty" would be a safe guess for most of them. But if you get selected for a seat that Labour has held for 50 or 70 years no one from the outside world is going to study you very closely.
The immediate outcome on the Left will be a burst of unimaginably vicious infighting as the Corbyn/anti-Corbyn factions try to purge each other. As a tiny contribution I'd point out two things gleaned from the morning's twitter:
First, that FTPT continues to do its thing. Pro-Remain parties actually garnered a higher share of the popular vote than Pro-Leave.
Second, via Raf Behr, that Labour Leavers ranked the prospect of Corbyn as PM equal with the threat of a second referendum in deciding how to vote. (a long way down on this page).
I was going to stay up and watch the results but decided instead to watch The Hunt For Red October and then go to bed. A good decision, I feel.
Also NW speaks for me above.
A scrap of consolation is that we were probably getting Brexit whatever happened, and at least this way we will stay in NATO.
Inappropriately reaching for trans-Atlantic metaphors, this seems like USA 2016 redux: a battle between two massively unpopular candidates brings the right-wing buffoon to power, aided by anti-majoritarian peculiarities in the system that exacerbate clumping on the left. (Of course there are many things very different.)
I'm sure we'll see arguments using this in favor of "electability" concerns among the Democrats.
Democrats have concerns regarding Scottish independence?
23. He was probably offered something and turned it down. The last outgoing PM to accept a peerage was Thatcher.
28. Yes, probably.
37. The small point I actually wanted to make: Against FPTP, the only party to increase their share of the popular vote over last time by more that 1.2% was the Lib Dems (+4.1%). They lost 10 out of 23 seats, including their leader. Them's the rules, but the rules are barking mad.
I don't believe in Scottish independence. I think it's become a Remainer comfort blanket, a fantasy of spite and revenge. But try to imagine seriously what a hard EU border between Scotland and England would look like, and what it would do to the Scottish economy. You'll not get a majority for that in another referendum. Remember, too, that FPTP applies north of the border. The SNP have some 53/59 seats on 43% of the vote. No, it's going to be like a couple who can't afford to divorce and are forced to share a house.
Curious minor point. There are now more nominally nationalist MPs from Northern Ireland than unionist. I don't know when, if ever, this was last the case. What does this show? It shows that the Iish understand tactical voting better than the English.
Curious minor point. There are now more nominally nationalist MPs from Northern Ireland than unionist. I don't know when, if ever, this was last the case. What does this show? It shows that the Iish understand tactical voting better than the English.
The Iish come in twos, hence the name.
45: I need to look into the details of how this shook out, but I think that might come down to Sinn Féin choosing not to run in three or four seats--essentially the best way for them to influence Brexit without giving up abstentionism. But yes, this is a first ever. And there's a majority of remain MPs there (but only three will take seats).
"They lost 10 out of 23 seats, including their leader."
Yeah, but remember most of those were ex-Conservative and ex-Labour MPs who moved to the Lib Dems. Not really a fair comparison. In terms of seats actually won last time by a Lib Dem, they're pretty much constant. (Constant at a disappointingly low level, true.)
So is this going last five years, or is there a majority to repeal the fixed-term Parliament act? And how long can Johnson ride the wave before his lack of policy catches up with him? When, for instance, at the end of the transition period he has no deal with the EU, much less anyone else? Especially considering "WTO terms" may well have ceased to exist by then along with the WTO.
44: And yet the British voted to Brexit, twice.
45/6: Whither NI? Especially considering IIRC Johnson conceded an Irish Sea hard border anyway.
this seems like USA 2016 redux: a battle between two massively unpopular candidates brings the right-wing buffoon to power, aided by anti-majoritarian peculiarities in the system that exacerbate clumping on the left.
In a way; but Corbyn wishes he had the popularity of Hillary Clinton. Clinton, after all, won a solid majority of the vote!
And yet the British voted to Brexit, twice.
The English did. The Scots (I would argue) are more sensible.
Maybe: That could explain both the Belfast South (SDLP) and North Down (Alliance) wins. Didn't work in Belfast East, where DUP held. SF earned Belfast North on their own and lost Foyle to the SDLP.
53 following up 48.
51: Yes, definitely. And they're very different politicians in just about every way, besides being broadly unpopular but anointed by party insiders (for some value of such).
But try to imagine seriously what a hard EU border between Scotland and England would look like, and what it would do to the Scottish economy.
And indeed the English economy. England is Scotland's biggest trading partner by a long way, true, but Scotland is also England's second biggest trading partner.
broadly unpopular but anointed by party insiders (for some value of such).
No no no. Corbyn emphatically was not anointed by party insiders. The parliamentary party hated him almost without exception. The myth about Clinton was she was an insider being corruptly handed the nomination by her powerful mates in the Democratic party leadership, against the will of rank and file Democrats. That is exactly the opposite of the situation with Corbyn.
That "(for some value of such)" was meant to mean that people who paid the six quid or whatever to be official Labour party members count as party insiders for my trying too hard comparison. Don't take it too seriously.
Reminds me, Global Britain. Number of diplomatic missions:
France: 267
Germany: 224
Spain: 215
Italy: 209
UK: 205
Everyone is talking about Brexit, but nobody is talking about Autonomous Region of Bougainvillexit.
The Guardian's liveblog reports this, from about 20 minutes ago:
"Jeremy Corbyn has just been speaking. He said he was very sad at the result and for 'many of the poorest communities' who would suffer.
"He maintained pride in the Labour manifesto but said the election was 'taken over by Brexit'."
Ya think? I mean honestly, who could have seen that coming?
Also, I just figured out how to make myself a multimillionaire if I ever decide to drop the whole ethics thing even lower. Selling penis enlargement pills by marketing then as being able to "restore size that was lost by vaccination."
Dance like nobody is watching, fuck like you survived smallpox.
60: It's a non-binding referendum, PNG parliament has to sign off, shit's gonna drag on. Like Brexit, but with tropical diseases.
Not under EU place-of-origin labeling rules it's not.
Ireland is now richer than the UK, which would have been unimaginable 25 years ago. Certainly Scottish independence is difficult in the short run, but isn't it better in the long run?
That said, a 50% threshold for indyref is crazy in the same way the Brexit vote was crazy. There should be a supermajority requirement for major constitutional changes.
Or just go with whoever gets a sword from a woman in a lake.
OT
Every time I look down at the Tiber I think "Horatius never swam that thing with his armour on"
but the ruins in Rome make s great backdrop to the election results. When some far distant Evenk gentleman on his grand tour contemplates the sweltering ruins of St Paul's, perhaps he, too, will wish to write a history of the decline and fall of the British Empire.
At the time, like most natural rivers, it would presumably have been a swamp?
king arthur, dying: bedivere. take excalibur. and yeet it into the lake
bedivere: nay my lord, you speaketh cringe. i cannot yeet such a fine blade
king arthur, still dying: yet yeet thou must
And the armor, presumably leather?
A thing about Roman traffic: you simply cannot tell from the size and condition of the road whether this is in fact an accepted main route to the airport or whether the driver is taking you to s quiet country lane where a Mafia hit man awaits.
I reassure myself with the traffic jam. Of there is a bit man at the end of this he's going to need a hell of a lot of bullets
Maybe if you say you're a journalist they'll realize you're penniless and won't bother.
I remember a man in Rome stopped me somewhere near the forum, said he was a cop, and asked me if I had any hashish. I thought I was being mugged since he showed no badge but had a gun (not in his hand). Maybe he was only going to mug me if I had hashish.
Or shoot you, like the drug-dealing dog you were.
The weens support me:
"fiercely ran the current, 510
Swollen high by months of rain;
And fast his blood was flowing,
And he was sore in pain,
And heavy with his armor,
And spent with changing blows; 515
And oft they thought him sinking,
But still again he rose.
Never, I ween, did swimmer.
In such an evil case,
Struggle through such a raging flood 520
Safe to the landing-place;
But his limbs were borne up bravely
By the brave heart within,
And our good Father Tiber
Bare bravely up his chin. "
79: 72 is from Twitter. The follow-up will appear when it's most needed.
Are most natural rivers really swamps? I'm sure they have swamps, but they probably have not-swamps for most of the way if the ground is rocky or steep.
Ireland is now richer than the UK, which would have been unimaginable 25 years ago.
IIRC this is a fairly dodgy statistic that leans a lot on people using Ireland to avoid corporation tax, which looks good in the figures but doesn't actually equate to individual Irish people having more stuff.
And the armor, presumably leather?
Bronze, perhaps? The Etruscan wars were late 6th century BC. But bronze is heavy too; wouldn't like to have to swim in it. Maybe he waded.
Ok sure Macaulay has unmatched expertise of the paleohydrography of the Tiber. And the armor is definitely leather, let's be honest.
The Tiber, at Rome, was not steep or rocky. We know this because it meanders. Also Rome was notoriously unbesiegable because of the malarial swamps.
The Thames around London was definitely a wide swamp pre London.
Also, 70.2 should really have been OPINIONATED EDWARD GIBBON.
12. on Corbyn:
Corbyn said "I will not lead Labour at the next election." (Kind of leaves it up in the air whether he expects to lead it until the next election.)
Paraphrased from somewhere: Corbyn was the most left-wing, most unpopular Labour leader since forever, but Johnson is the most left-wing Conservative leader since Heath.
56. I know that was true when Corbyn became the leader of Labour, which was a while ago. Is it still the case that the parliamentary Labour Party hates him? Which of his inner circle are likely to replace him? (Assuming they aren't all booted out in some way for being utterly useless.)
Unless it's hectically incised. But if it's hectically incised why does it have a delta, huh?
God s get credit
Humans get credit.
Even fucking geese get credit
But who are the real winged defenders of Rome? Does anyone ever thank us? Does anyone ever listen when we complain? Nah. "Bite me!" They say.
Very well then.
I thought the geese were Athenian.
The geese were Capitoline. Therefore Roman.
86.last: I can't think that many MPs have warmed to him since 2015, and there hasn't been much of an influx of new ones today. This gives a rough idea of the status in 2016:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorsements_in_the_2016_Labour_Party_leadership_election_(UK)
Of the 40 MPs supporting Corbyn, Dennis Skinner has gone; of the 172 opposing him, many have since left the party or lost their seats.
That's what happens when you freeload on someone else's mythology. Brand confusion.
Last word on the election: analyse this. OK, Boomer.
Jeez. What is wrong with that generation.
Wow, I googled "AB C1 C2 DE" and I had no idea this "social grade" system was so common and apparently familiar.
93: What are the bottom 4 rows of that chart?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRS_social_grade
95, 96: Well, that was embarrassing.
Anyway, it's interesting that there's not a huge difference between the different economic classes, and relatively little difference between men and women (that is, compared to recent US elections) and a huge difference between the generations. Why is that?
Am I right in thinking a 7% difference in voting between men and women is pretty big, historically? Of course the situation in the US right now where the Republicans are getting like 50% of men and 34% of women is off the charts.
That's only because the Republican Party decided to legalize heterosexual rape by the powerful.
101: That's always been legal. The Republican innovation is making sexual assault a qualification for high political office.
Brits: is Johnson more or less corrupt than Trump?
Controlling, let's say, for opportunity (amounts of wealth each has power or influence over).
Much less, I'd say, on a personal, financial, level. Not actually bankrolled by the Mafia via Deutsche Bank.
I think there's little to no comparison on that front. Boris is a buffoon and a liar, but he's not a criminal.
He also has basic levels of competence and intelligence. Remember he's in that group of world leaders laughing at Trump.
Is Boris as *amoral* as Trump might be a better question. Both fundamentally believe that the rules only apply to the little people; both will say whatever they think will benefit them most with whoever they're currently screwing, be that politically or physically. Would Boris go as far as Trump's level of corruption? He's intelligent enough that he's far less likely to get caught if he did.
I don't think Trump is amoral. Trump clearly enjoys causing pain to people.
One of the ways in which NPR's coverage of the election has been annoying is that Frank Langford keeps talking about Labour's "radical agenda," including nationalising BritRail and I keep yelling at the radio that it was privatising it that was radical.
"Boris is a buffoon and a liar, but he's not a criminal."
Conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm is a crime and I have heard the recording of Johnson committing it.
Meanwhile, Corbyn has actually summarised the results of the election as "We won the argument". Which, looking back at the notes I made after first meeting him, reminds me of one: "You can hear the silent 'QED' at the end of every paragraph".
112: I believe it is a reference to this -- https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/14/black-eyes-boris-johnson-plot-attack-reporter-darius-guppy
And Corbyn lost to this guy? Impressive.
For the Brits: what does this feel like? 1979? 2016? The end of the world? An overfried egg?
I don't know what 1979 felt like: I was out of the country from 77-83 more or less. 2016 referendum was unexpected until the week before and then the only person I knew who saw it coming even then was Polly T.
2016 Trump election - I have a photograph of the the G2 cover proclaiming Clinton's win.
This defeat is different in that it was very widely predicted. Johnson is leader of the Tory party precisely because everyone reckoned that he could squash Corbyn like a bug and this, to his party, outweighed everything else. The Guardian's coverage of the campaign was very obviously whistling past the graveyard. But I think the size of the majority was a shock.
It really has not sunk in yet that the Labour party has probably been destroyed forever as a serious political force. The shrinkage of support has happened to the other European social democratic parties, but now it is happening in a first past the post system.
I think this is a 1979-scale turning point, but I have no idea of the direction that the future now points to. The next big crisis of confidence and self-understanding will be the death of the Queen.
But what do the other people living here feel?
The next big crisis of confidence and self-understanding will be the death of the Queen.
You think that will come before the campaign for Scottish independence?
If I were British, I might be able to make a Stone of Scone joke here.
It really has not sunk in yet that the Labour party has probably been destroyed forever as a serious political force.
I think this could use more argument. The nature of FPTP--if you want to call it Duverger's law, fine--means not just that FPTP behaves badly in multi-party systems (ignoring regional parties), but it also generally isn't stable with long term single party states. (Japan being the glaring exception. Japan is usually an exception.) A second party emerges to represent some real difference. The question is whether that's going to be an existing party or a new one. If it's an existing party, the Lib Dems didn't exactly meet expectations in the last election, either. If it's a new party it'd have to deal with the birthing pains of going after votes from the dying parties (which worked for Labour the first time around, admittedly, but it took a while). And Labour is already large and factional, so it doesn't seem unlikely that a different faction could take control of it. It didn't work for Corbyn, but it did work for Blair.
It might take an election for the left to realize they need to converge on a champion, whether or not that's Labour, and that's going to suck.
120 is fair: as many people have pointed out, this was a gigantic Labour defeat but not really a huge Tory victory. The Labour vote collapsed where it mattered but the overall Conservative vote did not rise much at all.
On the other hand, the Corbynistas have a tight grip on the party apparatus. They only candidate I can see who has a chance of breaking through to the voters turned off by JC is Jess Phillips, and they loathe her guts. So, yes, maybe I was right after all and quite possibly the Left will lose the next election too. Much will depend on just how shitty things get after Brexit. It is at least a reasonable bet that Johnson will remain consistent and basically end the trade talks by declaring victory and getting the hell out, as he did with the withdrawal agreement. At which point all the people now tweeting "haha, so much for Project Fear" will find themselves oddly at a loss for words. The EU will screw us blind in the trade talks if it can. That's how things work. And of course the fantasy of a deal with the US, especially under Trump, is just ridiculous. We will all be poorer, and the poor will be poorer still. That might be enough to let a half decent Labour leader in next time around. I wouldn't bet on it, though.
I'm in pieces - not so much over the election result per se, though that's bad enough, but because it's going to rip away the European part of my identity and close the door on its restoration for at least a generation. Reading this very prescient piece from 2015, it's hard not to let a little bit of my anger at the egregiousness of the Tories spill over to encompass those activists who longed so badly for a more Socialist Labour party that they fooled themselves into thinking Corbyn was capable of delivering election victory. I was at one of his rallies in Cambridge during the leadership campaign, and the disconnect between the rapturous applause from the audience and the mild-mannered guy at the lectern onto whom they were projecting their hopes was very striking. I didn't realize then that this projection would end up not only betraying their own prospects, but also helping to ruin the hopes of all of us who wanted to stay part of the EU.
But no point crying over spilled milk. Current mood: il faut cultiver notre jardin. I'm running, baking, visiting aged relatives, and trying to get my brain sufficiently back on track to do some work and at least get started on Christmas preparations.
120. FPTP behaves badly in multi-party systems
This. If the disaster was because people hate Corbyn, can Corbynism survive with his cronies leading it? None of them seem to be papabile. So likely there will be a period where a new Labour leader further discredits Corbynism, and eventually they all get pushed overboard. Then Labour goes back to party leaders being selected with less of a percentage of the "party members" vote, and more of the parliamentary party's vote. Given that the Conservatives still couldn't get a voting majority (as opposed to a FPTP one) and the non-Conservative vote was mostly for parties to the left of the Conservatives, there is room for a left of center party, maybe just not for one as left as the Corbynistas want. Depends a lot on how much of the vote was against Corbyn, how much was against Corbynism, how much was in favor of Johnson, or how much was just in favor of getting the damn thing over and done with. Of course, what does a "New Labour" run on, if Brexit happens? Rejoining the EU?
121. I'm curious why you think Trump wouldn't want to make a favorable trade deal with the UK.
They don't want our diseased chickens and overpriced drugs.
Honestly, if I'm at the grocery store, I but the non-bacterial soup chicken.
124 -- a favourable trade deal, sure; just not one that is favourable to the UK.
128: As any such deal inevitably would be. But AIUI the whole idea at this stage is fantasy, as there is no final status agreed with the EU, nor will there be for years, even if Johnson essentially just surrenders on every point. And surrendering on every point would presumably entail either barring filthy US foodstuffs from the UK or barring UK foodstuffs from the EU.
This from the article in 122, which is indeed very prescient:
[At a Corbyn rally in 2015] ... Over here, a woman with a fading American accent tries to sell me a copy of Workers Hammer, apostrophe-shy newspaper of the Spartacist League of Britain.
"Do you want to buy our newspaper? It's only 50p."
"Which tendency are you, then?"
"Trotskyist."
"That doesn't really narrow it down."
This, too:
For years, Jeremy Corbyn was my local MP. I voted for him cheerfully. One of those beardy, tea-drinking lefties - just what you want at constituency level. I was dimly aware that he was said to hold some colourful opinions here and there, on this and that; none had any bearing on the parliamentary representation of our slightly grubby London suburb.
(Things are different now.)
But if you'd asked me, back in the day, how I felt about Jeremy Corbyn becoming the leader of the Labour Party, I'd have chuckled softly, shaken my head, realised that you meant the question seriously, doubled the size of my eyes, exhaled through a pursed-up mouth, then finally said "Hmmmmmmm. I like what that question implies. I really do. But does it absolutely have to be him?"
(Some things haven't changed.)
We're now three days away from the result of the Labour leadership election, and as you may or may not have heard, Jeremy Corbyn is the runaway favourite.
There's a sense in which all this is bloody marvellous. Well-heeled columnists and dinner-party commentators, let alone the moribund Labour Right, have no idea how desperate the situation has become. Corbyn's supporters - even the worst of them - understand it all too well. This, in many cases, will be why they are prepared to overlook the things they overlook. All that hope and anger, all that deep frustrated longing for something good, projected onto those snow-white whiskers...
And then there's a sense in which all this is bloody petrifying. Jeremy Corbyn? Are you fucking serious?
Does it absolutely have to be him?
Both Trump and Johnson are strongly motivated to make a deal, and neither of them gives a shit about details, so it's possible that there's a deal to be made. Apparently the US didn't drive a very hard bargain in the NAFTA revisions, because they wanted to be able to declare victory.
121: Thanks for the food for thought (ditto 122--especially the juxtaposition of his mild-manneredness and the excitement). My naive outsider perspective is that given how much and how visibly the knives are out for Corbyn and his followers, even if they have formal control of the party, maybe they won't for long? As for voters turned off by Corbyn--what about Keir Starmer? Or is the correlation of being turned off by Corbyn and being pro-leave too much for him?
131 feels right. Especially the: "I like what that question implies. I really do. But does it absolutely have to be him?" bit. (Although I am in is constituency now, which is interesting--it amuses me that you'd categorize it as a suburb.)
132: Why is Trump strongly motivated to make a deal with the UK? He could just as well make a big deal in the press about how the UK is trying to screw him over and he's getting the best deal for America--exactly what he's doing with China, except with post-Brexit UK the US has all the cards. If he screws over poultry farmers in the process, I don't think he really cares and it won't affect his approval in the slightest.
The US has Boris over a barrel but lucky thing that Trump is a terrible negotiator and easily played.
The UK is different because it's entangled with the EU. Any third-party deal that turns out to be inconsistent with the eventual EU deal will get killed and everyone (except Trump) knows it. Trump will be perfectly willing to spin some meaningless deal like he has with China, but he only even did that much because eventually he got an MOU to buy a bunch of pork and beans from farm states (which were going to get bought anyway because no amount of Xi Jinping Thought will make food price inflation go away). What exactly can Johnson do for Trump here? Buy coal from Pennsylvania?
Much will depend on just how shitty things get after Brexit.
Historically, the idea that if things get shitty enough people will turn to the moderate left has very little to support it. You only need to look at Europe between the wars, when things were about as shitty as they get. In practice, people tend to embrace progressive agendas when things are visibly getting better and the possibility of them getting better yet seems real. In times of desperation, they either go for extreme solutions or settle for paternalism. By the next UK election, Johnson is going to have paternalism all sewn up.
134: I'm not British, but isn't Johnson also a bad negotiator? They can't both be the worst.
122 was a good article. It's like going through the looking glass. Big chunks of the UK political environment are completely alien to me, but when I compare the results in 2016 in both countries, it's very familiar. When I think about last week's vote in the UK and how things currently look in the US (disclaimer: I usually refuse to make any predictions this far in advance, and officially I'm still doing so), it's horrifying.
So, I've been watching season 3 of The Crown during my morning 45 minute indoor bike ride. This morning was the Charles goes to Wales episode. Brutal.
Brexit and this UK election make me wonder how long it's sustainable for a generation of retirees to destroy the future for working age people while hoarding the wealth. Has there ever been this big of an age split in politics before? Are we going to see a young-person revolution somewhere?
119: I was looking at a list of chancellors of British universities recently, and ran across "Baroness Young of Old Scone."
What exactly can Johnson do for Trump here? Buy coal from Pennsylvania?
Someone's got to deliver Christmas coal to the children of England, and Boris is your man.
139: I'm wondering if there's a way to quantify the problem, and when it's going to naturally resolve. That is, is there an identifiable bolus of elderly rightwingers who are getting older, so if the younger boundary of the bad group is 63 this year, it'll be 65 in two years? And then standard demographic methods could provide some insight into when it's going to be less electorally important?
142: There is a lot of aging into terribleness that does not make me sanguine about this.
I am genuinely uncertain about that. I think there's at least some extent to which there's a bad cohort -- it's not people in their 60s and 70s regardless of when they were born, it's literally Boomers (or a subset of Boomers). But I could be completely wrong.
Isn't the percentage of the population that is elderly going to start dropping soon? I guess maybe I am thinking of Pittsburgh, not nationally.
Oh, that's true -- if the Boomers are a demographic pig moving through the python, as they die off, whether or not old people are still terrible, there will be fewer of them by percentage. But that's a ways out, isn't it?
The tricky thing is the olds keep getting crazier every year, and it's hard to know whether they get radicalized faster than they die.
146: Yeah, they're going to be around forever. As a Boomer myself, my feelings about this are best described as "mixed."
I am genuinely uncertain about that. I think there's at least some extent to which there's a bad cohort -- it's not people in their 60s and 70s regardless of when they were born, it's literally Boomers (or a subset of Boomers). But I could be completely wrong.
Right. People who remember World War II are a much more liberal generation. A lot of rural white areas becoming more Republican is those people dying off.
143: Other demographic improvements are equally doubtful. A lot of Hispanics are going to become white, with all that entails.
I think there's two separate phenomena here: one is the conservatism and burn-the-world-down ethos of Boomers specifically as a generation, but the other is the effect of Fox News, Facebook, and Sinclair on retirees who are bored all day, have weakened critical thinking skills, and consume media that makes them angry and conservative. The latter effect might continue working on the newly retired.
Can we keep making jokes about eating sharks? That makes me happier.
144: it's literally Boomers (or a subset of Boomers). But I could be completely wrong.
I have somewhat semi-angry thoughts on this but will look up some data first before going full asshole. I have tracked voting by cohorts here in the past, and I think for a lot of it there were some younger cohorts who had been voted more Republican when adjusted for age. But then: 1) Yes the demographic bulge make it an outsized influence even if it is just the aging effect that all cohorts see, and 2) I think there was a bigger than usual uptick with the Trumpist thing (2012-2016 movement) for the boomers. And I do think there is some aspects of Trumpist Republican that is potentially more attractive to that age cohort than the more Reganesque stuff (specifically resonance of MAGAism).
Enough for now. When do all of the truly lead-addled away? (anyone born before about the mid-70s I believe.)
151.last: yes. The freaking media effect is potentially huge.
A bad thing right now is that we are losing the Greates Generation who were relatively liberal, but the cohort behind (Silent Generation?) were also a relatively conservative one.
I was born in the early 70s and figure on being around for a while if I can control my blood pressure.
I'm just Moby's age, and I think we're the youngest of the lead-addled. As you say, by the mid-70s that was clearing up.
In trying to look for things where I previously posted on the demographic voting trends I came across this cheery thoughts of mine from just before the 2014 midterms:
My Mom and I had our doom and gloom talk late last night. My despair is less linked to current policy issues and /or outcomes, but what a clearly deranged electorate could be led to. Fearful privilege is a very dangerous state. Your pessimistic imagination is the limit.
In my bad moments I think that sometime in the next 50 years we'll do something as a nation that will land American Exceptionalism in a similar neighborhood to as National Socialism.
Godwin can suck my dick.
That was the fucking Ebola scare year. Fuck.
I grew up in a very rural area, so probably not very much lead in the air.
I grew up in a thick cloud of leaded exhaust.
The only smoke I breathed in regularly was from the two packs of Winstons my dad smoked each day.
Ok, this Upshot piece which I linked in that thread on political leanings by birth year is a nice visualization of what I describe in 153. Unfortunately it is from 2014, i really would like 9or dread, actually) to see the update for 2016 and 2018. But you can see the baselines up until then.
I loved smelling bus fumes as a child.
157: Was your first word perchance"taxi"? (As it was for my Manhattan born-and-raised niece.)
I'm happy the local bus system has switched to natural gas. Much nicer to stand next to.
153: When do all of the truly lead-addled away? (anyone born before about the mid-70s I believe.)
It me. As if my comments didn't give that away already.
I can't say that I agree with his aside about copying legal argument, but doesn't Emmet Sullivan's smackdown of Michael Flynn redeem our generation even a little bit? No?
